For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

Still hunting some drops from Warder of Love.

I can kill him on my thf, but I also die a fair bit.
Usually have EV tank plus the usual supports. I basically slap the first TAWS on EV then try to stay alive long enough to finish him before he wastes me. He seems fairly squishy, unfortunately so am I.

I’ve never killed the adds, what kind of hp do they have? Is there any subjob that would give me access to something that could sleep the adds?

What subjobs do you guys go? Melee in MDT or normal TP set?

Any tips?

Cheers!

It's a glass cannon race tbh. Probably not going to land any sleeps with a sub job (sleep bolts maybe lol) and trusts are pretty unreliable (AATT)

I just popped a couple temps and PD and pray to kill it before it got me on THF. (regain, wings, soldiers etc)

If you have a REALLY good AE set you might be able to kill them that way but it's not very easy. You just end up dying because love isn't dying.

With todays gear TaRudra Evis SaRudra should very easily kill it

I remember trying to solo Warder of Love a long time ago. Your best bet is probably a perfect dodge zerg with magic evasion gear. If you open with a 3000 TP TA Rudras on a trust and follow it up with bully and a SA Rudras you should be able to chunk his HP by a huge amount, and you should only need another 2 or 3 weaponskills to finish him off after that. I remember his max HP isn't all that high, but if you're doing it solo there isn't anything you can do to control the adds. There is no sub job option to deal with the adds, and I can't imagine there are any trusts that you can rely on to sleep them either (there are too many waves in too quick succession to rely on AATT), so it's just a race against time.

Here's a youtube link to a successful thief solo from approximately a year ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC-7znxQKWI&t=22s

Buff yourself with all the appropriate zerging temporary items and go to town. The worst thing that can possibly happen is for you to get charmed, since that immediately despawns all of your trusts, so a charm buffer in addition to the zerg items is probably a good idea.

Oh and, Good luck!

That video is of me btw lol.

Ok, thanks guys.

Yeah it’s pretty much a race at the moment. I’ll just keep at it and hope I come out on top more often than not.

Thank you for the video link. I have seen it before, but still appreciated!

Edit/update

I wasn’t using temps, idk why lol...
Anyway now I pop monarchs, Barbarians, and spy.
3000tp TA Rudras on EV, Bully SA Rudras and it’s dead or 1 ws from death...

Of course first drop is the one item I don’t want lol. Anyway thanks for reminding me to use my temps. Just came back after a break.

Various people. I constantly get denied for Ambuscade and SR (seriously SR...) when they shout for a DD spot. It's several different people saying stupid ***like that.

Also when I join Dynamis-D parties, I always get thrown into the "left over party" which includes heal and maybe haste. I never get buffed. Then I occasionally get told my DPS needs work. And in some hilarious cases, I end up being the top DD with no buffs. That tells a big story.

Being in the "left out" party is the only good way to do dienamis. You get to rank yo ***up and give no effort. That's win:win dood.

Because there are entirely way too many DDs. When you get tells from 10 DD everytime you shout and picking either one can clear the content anyways people will just pick whatever makes most sense in their brain....because they can.

Thats the issue right there.

You got 2 tanks, 3 healers, 9 buffers, (a sleeper?) but all 18 want to be dd.

Force max 1 buffer, no rotations or just delete 10 dd jobs.

Getting turned down for an ambuscade PUG shout on a DD job (ANY DD job) is the norm rather than the exception. There are only 2-3 DD spots available, and any shout is probably going to get responded to by half a dozen people (usually more) in less than a minute. This IS Asura we're talking about after all....

I get turned down for PUG stuff plenty. We all do. I also organize a lot of my PUG runs. I have yet to see someone leave one of my groups or even so much as complain because I was playing a thief instead of "insert other desirable DD job here".

There's only one DD slot for ~14 jobs.

RUN WHM COR BRD GEO DD are more or less 100% of every single PUG.

Remember when you were lucky to get a bard? now its bard cor AND geo or pass.

Legit if cor gets one more buff there will never be "DD" shouts again. double cor only.

Play a desired job -> make friends + GitGud -> get to come on whatever job you want on occasion.

That's been how FFXI has worked since... forever. I come THF to just about everything now, except when another job is more suited to the content. But 99% of the time I am on THF.

Considering that Kaja is better than a perfect Taming Sari is there any particular reason you'd want Shijo instead of Kaja offhand with Tauret? Kaja is ludicrously easy to get, 15000 hallmarks and you're done (20k if you actually buy the base weapon for hallmarks)

I own Shining One and Tauret, and Shining one is HIGHLY overrated. Sooner or later people will figure out that Tauret > Shining One. Those of us that own both (and have a well geared dagger job) already know this.

The difference between Tauret/Kaja versus Tauret/Shijo is 25 accuracy 15 attack and 14 damage/15 delay versus 5 dex, 5% dual wield, 2% triple attack rate, 4% crit hit rate, 5% crit hit damage. The difference in base damage in the offhand dagger is very minuscule because it's a small fraction of your white damage in a build that has a huge weaponskill spike, and shijo compensates with crit rate, crit damage, and triple attack rate anyway. The dual wield may or may not put you over the delay cap depending on how you gear. Shijo's critical hit rate/damage and dex are what makes it so amazing with tauret. You're already praising tauret so I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you you why more dex, crit rate, and crit damage is good. On paper I believe Tauret/shijo looks just as good, if not better than tauret/kaja.

Don't sell shijo short. Its actually a really solid offahand. It's also comparatively just as easy to get as kaja. Any reasonable group can deal with Amymone, and eschalixirs are dirt cheap nowadays.

Was this your name on Alla?

Lol what?

Both are used by completely different jobs. How you can even compare them XD

In case you are comparing Tauret THF to ShiningOne SAM for example, then Tauret THF has no chance. Tauret THF DPS is just below 8k, ShiningOne SAM is around 9-10k.

Not the situation here, but I plan on using a perfect sari offhand (when I get one) for the treasure hunter+1 along with the rest of what makes it usable, so that I only need the other +4 from the relic+3 gloves and never have to wear empy feet again.

I mean, it's objectively the second/third best non-niche weapon for every job that can use it. At fractions of the cost and time investment. Without requiring Wave 3 clears or multiple failed runs.

It is, in no way, shape or form, overrated.

When you gimpulse drive in tp gear it totes looks overrated. I see failures doing 5-8k shining one ws all the time, if it weren't so pathetic it'd be hilarious.

The thing that bugs me about shijo is it's high delay. How does jugo +1 stand up as an offhand with Tauret or is it obsolete now? It's got relatively low damage but basically the lowest delay we can get for an offhand dagger.

For Herc augments for an Aeolian Edge set. how does WSD and MAB compare? If I roll a +35MAB what will that compare to for WSD?

If I roll a perfect +5% WSD but the piece has no +MAB or INT at all, is that still worth keeping, over something with lower WSD but some MAB and INT?

Cheers!

NOTE TL;DR summary at the very bottom.

I did some basic math to compare a few dagger combos damage and TP per hour ratios. For each combo I assumed capped delay reduction, and calculated dual wield numbers using our dual wield III trait, and the 12 dual wield we get from Reiko Yotai and our job points gifts bonus. I also applied 51% triple attack from the gear listed in my TP set for the tauret, and adjusted to use 54% triple attack on taming sari and jugo kukri +1 to account for the bonus the dagger itself has. So basically an ideal tp setup. Aftermath, attack/defense, and fSTR have not been accounted for, and store TP from gear is associative. I'll just list the final numbers to keep the post as clean as I can.

----Twashter/Taming Sari----

1,086,000 base damage/hour
455,000 TP /hour


----Twashtar/Tauret----

1,159,000 base damage/hour
467,000 TP/hour


----Twashtar/Jugo Kukri +1 ----

1,098,000 base damage/hour
501,000 tp/hour

Based off these numbers we can make some logical assumptions. For starters, as expected the Jugo Kukri +1 gains TP the fastest, but the difference between it and tauret is only 7.4%. The most important thing to keep in mind here is that as your rate of tp gain increases so too does the percentage of wasted tp due to things like multi attacks going off in quick succession, human error, and human reaction times. This is amplified greatly by the supersonic attack speed we get with such a low delay. Anyone who's used that combo at max haste knows how your attack animation can't keep up with the system and turns into a constant blur of swings. I'd hazard a guess that the difference in effective TP usage between the two combos is going to come out fairly close to a wash, maybe a few percentile difference or so but definitely not close to the optimal 7%.

The next thing to consider is the stats on the weapons themselves. Taming sari has 22 dex, 22 STR, 42 attack (accounting for strength), and 37.5 accuracy (accounting dex). In the same vein, Tauret has 10 dex, 42.5 accuacy (dex accounted), and 25 attack. Jugo kukri +1 has nothing at all.

Since my basic maths don't take the attack/defense ratio or fSTR into account, but in practice those factors will play a part in performance, you have to adjust the white damage numbers higher for taming (str and attack both) and tauret (attack) in accordance to the stats. Furthermore, you also have to account the dex/str/attack into rudras and evisceration formulas too. When you do that Taming and Tauret both clearly pull well ahead of Jugo Kukri +1 based off raw damage numbers alone, and that doesn't even account for the accuracy they come with. The wind damage jugo Kukri +1 has is cute, but it's nowhere near significant enough to counteract the pure stat difference between the other options.

Interestingly, when you consider that a perfect taming has a 12 dex, 22 str, and 17 attack lead over tauret it makes a solid argument that the extra power the stats give to rudra's/evisceration may push a perfect taming back into the lead. But at this point we're getting into assumptions, because the numbers start to get really close and they could honestly go either way. I know you asked for Tauret mainhand rather than Twashter, but the tauret calculations can be substituted for a Kaja Knife for similar results. But either way, it does make it pretty clear that jugo kukri +1 won't be able to keep up with the other dagger options, be it kaja offhand or shijo for the Tauret main user, or the standard go to options for the REMA user.


TL;DR version: Yes, Jugo Kukri +1 is outdated.

So with R15 twatwasher and moonshed tp bonus are we spamming rudas at 1k tp or 1750tp ?

and is it worth it to do the 3ktp aftermath ?

What content? Dynamis? Ambuscade? A boss with an extended duration fight? If you expect a lot of melee time it's absolutely worth it to get level 3 aftermath going. I maintain aftermath 2 and 3 in dynamis near fulltime. If a good opportunity presents itself to make darkness I'll often take advantage of it with a level 2 aftermath and then overwrite that with level 3 thereafter. The best part of rudra's storm is that it has incredibly good TP scaling. That's what makes it so broken in the first place. You lose pretty much nothing holding TP to 2K, and the losses from 2k to 3k are minimal. 5.0-->> 10.0 --> 13.0. fTP If you can close a darkness with 3K TP the resulting skillchain will pretty much double the damage, and if it's inside dynamis D the double darkness weather effect will usually make the skillchain do more damage than the rudras itself. I can hit 45-60K Rudra's on most T1 and T2 NMs inside dynamis with proper buffs and the resulting skillchain effect absolutely makes holding TP for a full aftermath worth it. Even without the skillchain I'd still get level 3 aftermath going. 50% triple damage procs are a serious DPS bump over 30%.

Not that it really changes anything but you forgot that Jugo +1 has 21 accuracy.

im not considering external factors as possibilies for dark chain etc s that offcause will always skew the picture for the given situation

What im trying to figure out if it the ws from rudra storm going of at 1000tp almsot twice the speed with 2x 250tp bonues is more worth it than holding tp to 1750 which get to the 2000 effective mark wit the tp bonus

ignoring the tp bonus for a moment waiting to 2000tp would give us a raw 2% more ws dmg. compare to 2x 1000tp

but tossing in the tp bonus it becomes abit more murky. as we are now not going twice as long for the effective 2000tp ws. but on the other hand we are missing out on the top bonus kicking in twice over the almost same time

aka
2x 1250tp ws vs a 2000tp ws with 12.5 faster WS speed.

Simple answer. If you're stacking with sneak attack or trick attack, it's worth it to hold to at LEAST 2k effective tp for a rudra's storm. If you're not stacking, then sure. 1K is better. I can't think of any scenario where this won't hold true 100% of the time in terms of damage efficiency. Of course if you just wanna finish off a mob and know that you can do it with a stacked rudra's that's different, but certainly never the wrong thing to do either.

It's also going to depend on who you're grouping with. Are there going to be skillchains occurring? Then stronger Rudra's for stronger skillchains may be better. Being able to vary based on that is probably the closest true "skill" can happen in this game.

Woudln't it be funny if SE buffed the ambuscade weapons again but also required a master trial weapon for the upgrade?